Georgia Virtual School, Jamie Sachs, Program Coordinator
Qualities of Teachers
  • Compassionate
  • Work with minimal supervision
  • Patient
  • Sense of Humor
  • Risk-taker, willing to experiment
  • Content knowledge
Application - How do you identify these people?
  • What programs do you use on a regular basis and how do you use them?
  • List 3 websites that you used in your classroom instruction and how do you use them?
Interview - conducted on Elluminate
Inteview
  • What is the most difficult concept in the curriculum you teach? What do you do to mhelp students master this concept?
  • Describe the actions you tiik to improve your abilities or knowledge in your last position.
  • What's the best thing that ever happened to you in education?
Training
  • Ten week training course - analogous to our pedagogy training; lots of scenarios with feedback; lesson evaluation and creation; developing your online voice; lead an Elluminate session
  • Practice Course - platform training
  • Teacher Forum
  • Student Teaching - they take over at the end of the course they are working in
  • Full year of supervised teaching with a coach (paid position, interdisciplinary, support, professional development)
  • Required Professional Development
Teacher Support
  • 24/7 Technical Supprt
  • Manual
  • Limit enrollment based on ability of teacher
  • Teacher Copy Center
  • Automated administrative tasks to take pressure off teachers
Professional Development
  • Twice-yearly Mandatory Retreat (total of 3 days)
  • Webinars - One-hour sessions, 10 gives you one Professioinal Learning Unit
  • Coffee Talk - kind of a chat room on announced topic
  • Timely Training - Coaches will do this for "on-time" topics
Evaluations
  • Pre-conferences
  • Setting annual goals
  • Observations with Checklists - Department chairs observe on a rotation among classes and teachers
  • Teacher Evaluation Rubric
  • Parent and Student Surveys are considered
Online Teaching Endorsement
  • Three online courses
jssachs@doe.k12.ga.us
Sue Steiner - consultant for Kiel eSchool
Modeled basically on Florida Virtual School
Develop a profile of successful online teachers to give to people who are seeking teachers
Attend a Florida Virtual School Course Development Workshop
Webinar Sources
  • FLVS
  • NACOL
  • eLern
Do we want to work on a handbook for online teachers? SharePoint Site?
Do we want to get into the business of searching for teacher candidates? Put links on website?
The Virtual Observation
  • Current announcements?
  • Emal responses within 24 hours
  • Positive tone to emails and pages?
  • Phone log?
  • Current syllabus and pace chart
  • Does the teacher archive chats?
  • Required progress reports?
  • Assignments graded within 48 hours